


All Our Urgent Restless Sighing

by DesdemonaKaylose



Series: Banners from the Turrets [20]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Mutual Pining, Polyamory, Post-War, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Threesome, catching feelings for your hook-up who is the robot pope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 07:00:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25346611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: “This is only until you find somebody you really wanna be with,” Ratchet said. "You find somebody steady, and we'll go back to being coworkers."Or: Three Car Pile Up Disaster, An Explanation of the Primal Household
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Optimus Prime, Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet, Optimus Prime/Ratchet
Series: Banners from the Turrets [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1265390
Comments: 58
Kudos: 243





	All Our Urgent Restless Sighing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Neveralarch, my hero, for doing all the beta and polish on this written-in-two-days son of a bitch

Despite all muddled hopes to the contrary, Deadlock woke up with a very solid, very real hangover. It was his own fault, he couldn’t deny that; he’d drunk enough engex to corrode a steel beam. Among the survivors of Megatron’s first ever conjunx reception, there were few mechs as astonishingly wasted as Deadlock, née Drift, who’d ultimately had to be carried away from the venue in an ambulance. The fact that the ambulance was very attractive and possibly open to amorous advances from a _sober_ version of Deadlock (or so he implied) improved Deadlock’s general view of how well the evening had gone.

He wasn’t on shift today, a blessing of Rung’s honeymoon. He’d wash up, try to choke down some fuel, and then he’d try giving Ratchet a comm. Would Ratchet want to _date?_ Would he want crystals and goodies and pretty words to convince him that Deadlock was serious? Deadlock would do whatever it took.

Later, though. When his head stopped pounding and he could actually remember everything that had happened at the reception.

But when he came stumbling out of his berth room and into the only other room in this cramped little flat, hand clutched against helm, he nearly tripped on the body laying across his floor.

“Oh slag,” Deadlock said, optics fritzing in and out, “did I kill somebody?”

Blue light blinked on at his feet. “I’m alive,” the body said, “thanks so much for the concern.”

Deadlock relaxed marginally. “Thank Primus,” he said, “I didn’t want to go back to jail.”

The body levered itself upright, with a wheeze and a grind of straining mechanisms, just about the same time it dawned on Deadlock what had happened.

“You _stayed,”_ he said, with an involuntary smile that made his left optic start to ache.

“Said I would,” Ratchet said, brushing dust off himself, now fully upright. “Anyway, I was just answering memos most of the night. No recharge hookup down here. No fragging furniture, either. Can’t you get a couch or something?”

“…You didn’t have to sleep on the floor,” Deadlock said. He frowned. This hurt less. “My berth could fit two.”

“I _specifically_ said,” Ratchet told him, “we were not going to frag, make out, or touch each other. How do you think sharing a berth would have ended, with you looking at me the way you were? I’m not made of solid steel.”

Deadlock gave him a long, serious once-over. “So you _are_ interested,” he said. “I wasn’t sure.”

Ratchet snorted. “Seemed pretty sure last night. I think I’ve still got drool in my gears.”

Deadlock flashed his fangs, to make up for the fact that he could feel his biolights flushing with a hellish combination of arousal and embarrassment. “I _meant_ , I thought maybe you weren’t into fragging around. You don’t seem like the type. Everyone knows you and Pharma were practically conjunxed for like, a million years.”

That was actually the first thing Deadlock learned about Ratchet, after coming to the hospital for his work-sponsor parole. It was weird, kind of a shock to the system. He’d actually heard it from Pharma, who was comfortable enough in his bitterness to remark on that shared history in front of apparently anyone, including the mech he’d called _Rung’s little pet sparkeater._

Didn’t bother Deadlock. He _liked_ it when Autobots wrote him off as a rabid berserker. Usually. Most Autobots.

The point was, Deadlock had pretty quickly taken apart the facts as he knew them and come to the conclusion that Ratchet was probably a serious commitment type, a wine-and-dine type, not the kind who’d be interested in the patented Deadlock brand of “get over here and sit on my spike, and I’ll eat your valve while you scream my name.” If that _wasn’t_ the problem, then Deadlock couldn’t make heads or tails of why Ratchet hadn’t wanted to frag him last night.

“And anyway,” he finished, “you never hook up with anybody at the hospital.” Deadlock had kept a _close_ audial on the gossip.

“I don’t hook up with anyone because I’m at my _job,”_ Ratchet said, “am I the only one at this institution who knows the meaning of _inappropriate workplace relations?”_

Deadlock’s plating flattened. “Is that why you don’t wanna ‘face me? Because we’re coworkers now?”

Ratchet blinked at him a couple times. “Now hey,” he said, “I didn’t say _I_ didn’t want to—I wasn’t trying to—” He dug two fingers into his chevron and then said, “I’m gonna go get out breakfast for us.”

Several kliks later, with two cubes of basic mid-grade set out between them on the top of the miniature cold-box, which was the only flat surface in Deadlock’s flat, Ratchet said, “I’m not _against_ us interfacing. I just want to know what _you’re_ getting out of it, before I agree to anything.”

Immediately, Deadlock relaxed. “Oh,” he said, “yeah, sure. Okay so what I’m offering to do is spike-and-valve, in a berth,” he started ticking off fingers, “maximum foreplay, aftercare, I’d rather top but if you really wanna spike me I’m willing to ride. I don’t do insults, blow jobs, or bondage.”

Ratchet blinked again. He took a sip of his cube, holding it between the two of them like a barricade.

“Wow,” he said, at last. “I’d heard ‘cons were cold, but—”

 _“Cold!”_ Deadlock sputtered. “I just offered to let you spike!”

“Uhuh,” Ratchet said, and took another sip of his drink. “What it sounds like you’re _offering_ me is a side hustle that’s gonna cost me a couple thousand shanix at the end of the night.”

“I’m not—I don’t do that kind of thing!”

Ratchet just looked at him, over the edge of the cube.

Deadlock set his jaw and then amended. “Anymore. I don’t do that anymore.” He knocked back half his cube in one go, and then said, “If I was trying to _sell_ you something, you’d know it.”

What he didn’t say—what he _wouldn’t_ say—was that the version of him who had peddled spike services in the backstreets hadn’t been anything close to this kind of picky about boundaries. And he certainly wouldn’t have bothered to list his own preferences to a prospective buyer. Despite the mileage he’d gotten back before the war, Deadlock hadn’t actually learned how to frag and _like_ it until after becoming a ‘con.

Before the war, he’d been a drifter—har har—an addict, a leaker, a scav. He took odd jobs. He did dirty work for cheap. Never had the focus to build himself a clientele base and stick with it, not the way Gasket had. Robbery, smuggling, day labor, sex. He’d sucked spike occasionally in gutters. No art to it, his mind already on the next fix, just trying to get it over and done with before the talking, fragging wallet could get any clever ideas about what else they wanted. Courtesan he had not been. It hadn’t seemed possible to him then that fragging could be anything but a chore. Why bother trying to please a partner when you could get yourself off faster and for free? He’d preferred the comfortable warmth of laying curled against the side of a friend, teeth embedded in an exposed wrist-line as they shared the _real_ truth of living.

His gaze lingered over Ratchet’s thick wrist, the clean white paint gapping to reveal hints of black cable underneath. What he wouldn’t trade to get his teeth in _that._

Oblivious to the scrutiny, Ratchet sighed and set down his cube. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not being fair to you. I’m just trying to figure out the… the _angle._ What it is you want from _me.”_

Deadlock eased up, but less than before, wary now. “Well it’s—if that’s how Autobots do it, I can list what I want from you, and you can list what you want from me? Is that how you do it?”

Ratchet’s optics flickered. “What.”

Deadlock flexed a set of claws, frustrated. “ _I_ don’t know, I’ve never fragged an Autobot before! I thought you’d want crystals and slag, I was gonna be _gracious—_ Primus, I’m gonna have to call Aglet. He’ll know how this works.”

“Do not call Aglet,” Ratchet ordered, “nobody else needs to know about my sex life.”

Deadlock made a frustrated noise and then clicked his claw tips on the top of the cold box. “Okay, he said, “okay. Then—how do you normally do this? When you wanna frag somebody, what do you tell them?”

Ratchet pursed his lips. He gave the corner of the ceiling a complicated look. “Actually, I’m having trouble remembering. It’s been a few thousand years.”

Deadlock frowned. “You mean, since Pharma?”

“…Yeah,” Ratchet said. “Since Pharma. Five times burned, twice shy, as they say.”

“Well if you were a ‘Con,” Deadlock said, and then abruptly found that he _liked_ this idea. He brightened. “—If you were a ‘Con medic, on a ship with me, and I wanted to hook up… First I’d get you alone somewhere. Then I’d tell you how sexy I think you are, and I’d offer you some of the things I’m good at. Then if you were interested, you’d tell me what kinds of things you’d do for me, in exchange.”

“What is this, a _barter_ system?”

Now it was Deadlock’s turn to blink. “I mean yeah, technically,” he said. “You get something you want, I get something I want. Equality.”

“But,” Ratchet said, looking lost. “How do… but don’t you…”

Deadlock waited, finishing off his drink, while Ratchet shifted helplessly from one abandoned sentence to another.

Come to think of it, he’d heard other Autobots call ‘Con culture cutthroat, cold, and calculated. Nobody noticed Deadlock lurking around the breakroom, when he didn’t want to be seen. Everything had a cost, they said, when they thought they were only talking amongst themselves. Sure, you could get _real_ kinky stuff from ‘Cons, stuff you’d never think about asking a good Autobot soldier for. But nothing came free. It was all about the exchange rate.

Well (and he wouldn’t admit this to just anybody) maybe it could be like that. When you had that many drifters and lowlifes and scoundrels all piled in the same place and equally armed to the teeth, you worked with what you had. And Deadlock had _liked_ it. He’d fit right in with the rest of them. Right up until Turmoil.

But the less said about Turmoil, the better.

Deadlock considered Ratchet for a moment, feeling the last of his headache recede into a manageable buzz. Sweet Primus, the mech really was to die for, with that jaw and those shoulders. He was worth more than a little extra understanding. A little extra effort.

If Ratchet didn’t want crystals, Deadlock had something else he’d probably like.

“Alright,” Deadlock said. “Tell you what. You get on the berth back there, warm your pussy up for me, and I’ll give you the routine they liked in the Darkmount medical bay.”

Ratchet’s brow went way up. For a second Deadlock was sure he’d made the wrong call, steeling himself to be graceful about it when Ratchet started shouting, but after a second, the doctor turned his gaze with some interest on the open bedroom door.

“I’ll stop at any point you want me to,” Deadlock added in a rush, vaguely remembering some more chatter he’d heard from Autobots before. “‘Cons aren’t all like that, with the no-means-yes rustwash. I like you, Ratchet. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Ratchet gave him a considering look. Deadlock tried to shift himself into an appealing pose, without making it obvious he was doing so.

“Alright…” Ratchet said. He held up one stern finger. “But _only_ because I deserve it, after a night like that.” 

\---

Ratchet arched up, thighs trembling from the effort of spreading any wider, gaze fixed dazedly on the ceiling. Deadlock’s engine was roaring, the steady pounding of his hips like a metronome—the kid could keep a rhythm, Primus _alive._ Ratchet’s valve channel twitched and dripped, warm and just at the edge of too-stimulated, clinging to the girth of Deadlock’s stark black spike.

He’d thought this was going to be some bare bones stress relief, a couple of friends (were they friends?) helping each other work out the knots from a long week of stress. He hadn’t even really been _sure,_ he’d half thought he was making a stupidly over-tired mistake. He hadn’t used his valve in ages and he wasn’t entirely sure he could overload from it, even. He’d thought maybe he’d let Deadlock wear himself out and then he’d finish himself off and they’d say no more about last night’s fit of misplaced passion—but god, he felt like his brain module was melting now, like so much hot oil down his spine.

He couldn’t _remember_ the last time he’d been spiked. Had it always been this good? How the hell had he ever given it up?

“Yes,” Deadlock panted, “yes, _yes,_ Ratch you feel so good, you’re so hot, open up for me a little more—”

Ratchet reflexively tried to part his thighs wider, but his specs wouldn’t allow it. He made a frustrated sound, a little higher and more desperate than he meant it to be.

“Shh,” Deadlock said, still rocking that perfect beat, “no worries, I got it. You let me take care of everything.”

Against his better judgment, Ratchet let him.

\---

Afterward, a little sticky and hot under the engine cover, Deadlock watched as Ratchet touched two fingers to his mouth, where Deadlock had kissed him in the moment of overload. Deadlock lay beside him, foggy with afterglow, cheek pillowed in the crook of his elbow.

“Better if you don’t kiss me,” Ratchet said.

“Mmng?”

“This is only until you find somebody you really wanna be with,” Ratchet said. He looked at his fingers, not at Deadlock. “You were all pent up, I could feel it—no wonder, after a reception like that, huh? Anyway, don’t get me wrong, I had a fun time helping you out. I’d even go again sometime, if you want to. But when you find yourself something, someone steady, we’ll go back to being coworkers.”

Deadlock frowned, a pang in the otherwise blissful glow, but didn’t argue. If that’s what Ratchet wanted, then that’s what Ratchet could have. Five times bitten, twice shy, after all. And Deadlock had _told_ Ratchet that he knew how to take no for an answer.

It wasn’t as if Deadlock didn’t know how to make the best of whatever scraps he was given in life.

\---

Ratchet and Optimus had drinks at the bar down the street from the hospital, where all the overworked and exhausted medics trying to run the only major hospital still functioning on Cyberton went for their offshift wind-down. 

It was nice of Optimus to come across town just to have a spritzer with Ratchet; the archive where he’d planted himself after the first ever all-citizen senatorial election was a long and dodgy drive away from here. They took a corner booth, away from all the junior medics who periodically wandered over to ask Ratchet about yet another war injury that Ratchet was listed as the primary surgeon for.

They debriefed. Mostly about the wedding. A little about work. Ratchet debated telling him about Deadlock, but it seemed weird—he and Optimus had always sort of avoided talking about sex, as if it was something a little too tender to poke at comfortably. 

By the third round, Optimus’s optics had taken on a far-away look, a half-smile on his rarely exposed mouth. He was still self conscious about the hardware after all this time, but he had to open the mask to drink his spritzer, so Ratchet was treated to an unusual view of a faint melancholy pull to his lips.

“What’s with the face?” Ratchet asked, and took a pull of his own much harder drink.

“Hm? Oh.” Optimus shifted his gaze back into the middle distance. “Just thinking.”

“Yeah,” Ratchet said, unimpressed, “I meant about _what,_ though.”

Optimus hesitated. “We’re living in an amazing time, aren’t we? Everyone is moving on, making lives, falling in love. Even Starscream’s discovered romance.”

Ratchet hmphed. He’d heard quite enough of Starscream’s very physical exploration of romance for one lifetime.

“I guess I’m just a little…” Optimus trailed off, his cheek in his palm.

Ratchet watched him, well aware of the unspoken heaviness around Optimus Prime’s position in the world—his legacy, his name, the person he had once been and the premier general he had become. 

“I know it’s silly,” Optimus said, and looked away from the table, “I could get out there and meet people if I really wanted to. But the idea of trawling endlessly through a cohort of strangers who think I’m some kind of demi-god, or some peerless warhero, or—Primus—their former _boss,_ it’s just… exhausting. I feel like no one will ever really know me again. Not like you do, Ratchet.”

An unfamiliar fizzle of warmth went up the back of Ratchet’s collar. A little mortified and a little pleased, somehow, he also looked away from the table, but in the opposite direction. There was a game of darts across the room that was turning into junior medics vs veteran staff.

A thought occurred to Ratchet; he sat up straighter. “As a matter of fact, I just got my wheels back under me myself. Maybe what you need is a dry run to get your motor going again.”

Optimus’s brows went up; he shot Ratchet a startled sidelong look. “You’re—”

“Yeah, I’m back on the market, I guess. Or something. I don’t know, I’m taking care of a guy right now,” Ratchet paused, tapped the table restlessly, and then committed to the offer before he could think better of it: “I could take care of you, too.”

Optimus stiffened, his cheek still caught in the palm of his hand. For a second Ratchet worried that he’d really stepped in it here, and he shouldn’t have broached the invisible taboo of a million year friendship. But then Optimus said, “Me? You’d really consider taking ca—I mean, fooling around with me?”

Ratchet sat back, relieved. “Yeah, sure. You’re not bad looking and I trust you. We know each other pretty well by now, don’t we?”

Optimus cracked a smile. “I should say we do.” 

“So there you go,” Ratchet said, and shrugged broadly. “What’s one more thing between friends?”

Optimus considered him for a moment, a look of quiet calculation behind his impassive optics that Ratchet recognized from a thousand strategy meetings. Then he lifted his head from his hand and nodded once, firmly.

“If you’ll have me,” he said, and that was apparently that.

\---

The first thing you had to understand about Decepticon ‘facing culture—okay the _second_ thing you had to understand, apparently, after “yes there is some haggling at the front end, do not be alarmed”, was that ‘Cons had their own little tropes. Their timeless classics, so to speak. If you didn’t _personally_ own a copy of “Sarge vs. The Insatiable Pumper” you definitely knew someone who did. And you had, almost certainly, unless you were completely sexless, seen one of the infinite variations of Decepticon-warrior-tames-haughty-Prime wartime porno.

Scene opens. A Prime who is not quite Optimus but clearly modeled after him is grappling with a righteous and loyal Decepticon warrior who is about to show him what it _really_ means to live in a casteless meritocracy. They roll around for a minute, and then the Decepticon pins him, and then it’s a glorious, mindless three act fantasy of ravishment and domination. 

Scene opens. Prime is being held prisoner by a Decepticon interrogator who is about to break him into a hundred little whimpering pieces and reveal how weak and needy the so-called avatar of god really is underneath all that flashy metal. By the end of it, the big blue convoy is drooling and gagging for it, slutty and shameless. No real Primes were harmed in the making of this film.

You get the idea. There were variations for all tastes, and Deadlock had seen just about every one in existence. Big hauler truck alts could make a killing in the Decepticon army if they were willing to put on some blue paint and get on their knees for an hour. Deadlock’s own guilty favorite was the one where the Prime lookalike got spiked so good that he flipped sides and became a fervent Decepticon convert, laying himself down on mess hall tables to please the libidos of his newly adopted faction. The bit where the star spreads his legs for the squad in the rec room and looks up at the ‘con who turned him, hopefully searching for approval from his natural superior and receives a smile and the suggestion of a nod in return—

Deadlock shifted from one leg to the other to hide the excruciating pressure in his codpiece while the real, actual Optimus Prime stared at anything in the room except him. Ratchet was still talking. Deadlock wished the sky would open up and drop a fleet of warheads on him, because at least then he’d know how to react.

“—Thought since you’re both trying to get to know people and open up the dating pool,” Ratchet said, pouring himself the third of three shallow engex glasses. “I’m always telling Optimus he needs to get out more, but he never listens.”

Deadlock accepted the cube with numb fingers. If only he could stop thinking about the vid saved on his permanent harddrive where fake-Prime’s valve was modded with those caudal nodes—

“I don’t…” Deadlock started.

Ratchet scowled at him. “You _said_ we could be a little more adventurous.”

Deadlock gave him a helpless look that probably didn’t communicate how much he’d been hoping for, like, maybe smoking a little bit of dross before getting their spikes out or something, and definitely not _Ratchet bringing Optimus Prime to date night._

“No, no,” Optimus said, “if Deadlock isn’t comfortable, I don’t want to intrude. I know I can be a fairly intimidating person to attempt intimacy with, and—”

At the back of Deadlock’s memory, a flash of a first meeting flickered and flared: the crumbling Dead End dirt, the static crackle of an incapacitating high, fluid from his split lip smearing on the clean smooth armor of Orion Pax...

Deadlock bristled. “I’m not _intimidated,”_ he said. “Just because you’re used to everyone on the planet rolling over and spreading their legs for you at the drop of a bolt—”

“Uh, I’m sorry, that is definitely not what I was implying,” Optimus said. 

“You think I can’t take you?” Deadlock puffed himself up as much as he could, shoulders back, finials flared. “I can take you any time, any place.”

Optimus looked warily from Deadlock to Ratchet and back. “Are we—are we talking about interfacing or fighting right now?”

Ratchet shrugged.

Deadlock, a full head shorter than Optimus and painfully aware of it, stepped forward and jabbed his finger into the convoy’s chest plate. “I’ll frag you so good I’ll make you a permanent valve mech, Prime, don’t test me.”

For a second Optimus just stared down at the finger in his chest, at a loss for words, and then his cooling fans clicked on.

Something guilty and giddy flared like warning lights in the back of Deadlock’s head. Oh, Primus, he was about to do something stupid and reckless and, who was he kidding, “stupid and reckless” was his modus operandi.

Deadlock put his hands on Optimus Prime’s windshield and _pushed._

\---

Bravado got them over the hump that was the steel-melting awkwardness of this encounter, and then Deadlock discovered the soft spot on the Prime’s collar faring that took his teeth like it was made for them, and Optimus Prime went to plasma jelly underneath him.

“Oh my god,” Optimus said, his voice ragged and hoarse, “did you leave an _imprint?”_

Deadlock licked the pitted metal, wet and messy, and said, “Worried everyone will know you laid down and took it from a ‘Con?”

Optimus made a startled noise and arched up sharply, his spike jumping against Deadlock’s thigh.

From the other end of the berth, observing keenly but not otherwise engaged in the proceedings, Ratchet said, “You’re into Decepticons, Optimus? I wouldn’t have pegged you for a faction fetishist.”

Optimus looked mortified—his already flushed biolights blazed with embarrassment. “It’s not that. It’s… er…”

Deadlock blinked down at him for a moment, and then grinned so wide he could feel his back teeth showing. “You like being _marked_ , big bot?”

Optimus covered his face with his arms. 

Deadlock kept grinning, as he hefted Optimus’s leg back out of the way and exposed his swollen array, enormous convoy spike and plush, sinfully soft valve. “Oh, I can work with this. Ratchet, give me a hand here, will ya?”

Ratchet glanced between them, an odd expression sliding across his face. “Are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s why I asked,” said Deadlock. “Come on, I got an idea and it needs more hands to make it work.”

Ratchet shuffled over on his knees, which, frag, Deadlock needed to _not_ overload behind his own panel at this point in the night. He looked doubtful.

“I’m not asking for anything weird,” said Deadlock. “I’m just gonna eat this valve—” he patted it proprietarily and Optimus squeaked. “—And I need you to hold the Prime’s hands so he doesn’t grab my head.”

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to,” said Optimus.

“Yeah, you say that now,” said Deadlock. “But what about in five minutes when I’m three fingers deep and you’ve forgotten your own name?”

There was a wheeze of hot air leaving the Prime’s smokestacks. “Five minutes?”

Ratchet sighed and went to hold Optimus’ hands. It looked more comforting than restraining but—yeah, okay, that was doing it for Deadlock too, he needed to get his tongue in this valve immediately.

Optimus’ horn actually went off, once Deadlock started fingering him. Deadlock looked up and met Ratchet’s optics, and Ratchet looked almost as stunned as the Prime himself.

\---

“I just want,” Optimus panted, fluid-streaked and limp and totally wrecked in between them, “to thank you. For letting me visit your relationship. It’s been. Very enlightening.”

Down between his legs, spike buried in Optimus’s valve, Ratchet stiffened. “No,” he said, “we're not—we just frag, it's not—”

Deadlock pulled his teeth out of the Prime’s finials, giving the heavy spike in his grip a nice hard squeeze to make up for it. “Yeah, Ratchet wouldn't want to date someone like me.”

“What are you talking about?” Ratchet said. “Of course I, you're great, I—”

Deadlock dragged the tip of a claw up Optimus’ spike, just light enough to make his whole sturdy frame shiver. “You're a brilliant surgeon and I got a probation tracker, doc, I know you're just here for my spike.”

Optimus spat static. It was so hard to _focus_ when he was being taken in almost every way at once. “Could,” he said, “could you not have this conversation while you’re fragging me?”

“Oh,” they both said, at the same time, “sure, yeah.”

\---

Later, when Optimus was in recharge, all worn out by a truly impressive amount of sex, Deadlock thought about bringing it up. ‘What were you going to say?’ he’d ask Ratchet. ‘You know, when you—what do you _mean,_ I’m great?’

Ratchet was still awake. He was watching Optimus sleep, and he looked agonizingly, impossibly fond.

Deadlock turned over on his side and didn’t say anything at all.

\---

By the third time Ratchet brought Optimus over for a hook-up, Deadlock started to get the weird feeling that he was being handed _off_ to the Prime, somehow. That night they’d wrapped up pretty late; Deadlock and Optimus had been cuddling while Ratchet watched from the other end of the berth, with this weird expression on his face, until he finally announced that he had a night shift but they were welcome to stay in his apartment, it's fine, just lock up when you leave—

What stage of fragbuddy _was_ this? Deadlock buried his face in the flattened pillow and tried not to feel too despondent. He’d _said_ he was fine with a hook up. He’d _said_ he was fine with casual. He knew when to take no for an answer, he did, he _did._

It was just. Optimus fragging _Prime_ would let Deadlock cuddle with him, kiss him during sex—Ratchet wouldn’t even let him have that much, not since that first time. Sometimes Deadlock dreamed about it, the soft wetness of Ratchet’s mouth, the way he’d opened up to Deadlock like a, like—

Deadlock wasn’t any good at romantic metaphors. Wasn’t any good at romance, in fact, so really it was a good thing that Ratchet only wanted him for sex.

It was late. He would normally be going home about now. It felt weird to be here without Ratchet.

At a sound from elsewhere in the apartment, Deadlock lifted his head blearily and found that a neat little tray had been set on the floor next to his side of the berth, a hefty bowl of energon complete with several little tins of additives arrayed around it. He blinked. The bowl and tray remained.

“What?” he said. 

“I just realized I haven’t fueled today,” said Optimus’ voice, from somewhere nearby. “I brought you some too. But I have no idea what you like, so…”

Even without looking, Deadlock could just _hear_ the sheepish shrug. Amazing. Optimus fragging Prime, most powerful Autobot in the world, embarrassed because he didn’t know what his three-time hookup wanted for a midnight snack.

Deadlock smirked despite his bleary post-frag vision. He’d overloaded so hard his sensory suite was still playing catch up.

“You got magnesium in there?” he asked.

Optimus’ hand actually reached down and tipped one of the tins towards himself. “Er,” he said. “No. I can go check the cabinet again? Most of Ratchet’s supplies are just empty jars he’s forgotten to refill.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Deadlock said, and knocked back the whole serving raw, sitting up in the berth just enough to avoid spilling everywhere. The dribble that did escape him, he scraped up off the edge of the berth and licked off his fingers methodically.

When he looked up, Optimus was staring at him from where he was standing next to the berth. Staring at his fingers anyways. Deadlock buried a twinge of shame at being caught acting like a gutter-starved scav by an autobot Prime and gave his whole palm a long, sultry lick.

“You wanna go another round?” he said. “I’ll eat you out, like that first time. Call it a nightcap.”

“You’re too generous,” Optimus murmured, but he came down to the edge of the berth all the same, and let Deadlock push him back into the pillows.

He made a handsome picture, Deadlock had to admit, with his legs open and his pert blue node throbbing. Better than any cheap knock off porno, that was for sure.

And if he fell asleep hugging one of Ratchet’s pillows, after, it wasn’t like Ratchet was there to complain.

\---

That night Deadlock woke Optimus in a jumble of panicked instinct, physically perched on his chest, knives out. There had been a Bad Noise in the house. After a lifetime of living on the streets, even before the war—even before the whistle of falling missiles in the night, even before the air raids and the trenches—Deadlock slept with one audio pickup tuned to the door. There had been a noise. He’d been up and armed before he knew what it was, really; he’d thrown a leg over Optimus’ chassis and crouched down, ready for what might come.

Deadlock’s first thought was “somebody is assassinating Prime.”

His second thought was “I’d like to see them try.”

“What’s wrong?” whispered Optimus.

“Dunno,” muttered Deadlock. “Scratching at the door.”

“Let me up,” said Optimus, and for a moment Deadlock was _sure_ that he was going to be told to go back to sleep and stop making a fuss about nothing. But:

“We’ll stand on either side of the door,” said Optimus. “Take the intruder by surprise. Let me have a knife.”

Deadlock was actually in the middle of giving Optimus a _weapon_ when the door clicked open and Ratchet’s familiar footfalls entered the apartment.

“Oh,” said Ratchet, in the doorway of his own berthroom. “Well. You two have stamina.”

“We were asleep,” growled Deadlock, irritable at the false alarm, “before someone sounded like he was trying to break in.”

Ratchet’s mouth thinned. “Just forgot a datapad, decided to come back on my fuel break. Don’t worry, I won’t be here for long.”

Deadlock opened his mouth and then shut it again. He didn’t know what to say. The Prime’s engine was throbbing underneath his thighs, and Ratchet was turning away.

“Breathe,” said Optimus. “It’s alright.”

Deadlock felt like screaming, but he did his best to breathe.

\---

“Hey,” said Ratchet, “honest question. Am I bad at relationships?”

“Yes,” said Pharma. “Suction, please.”

“Are you _really_ talking about this?” demanded First Aid. “We’re in the middle of surgery!”

Ratchet looked down at the racer on the table, with his guts opened and his fuel intake in pieces. “It’s fine, he’s out. Can’t hear a thing.”

“That’s not the _point—”_

“Anyway,” said Ratchet, pointedly directing the suction where it was needed, “could you elaborate on that, Dr. Pharma?”

Pharma didn’t look up from where he was coaxing the racer’s tubing out of a nasty kink. “You work yourself to exhaustion, you don’t make time for yourself or anyone else, and you don’t communicate about your feelings under any circumstances whatsoever. You are a misery to yourself and everyone who stumbles into your life.”

It was funny—it actually felt good to hear Pharma say that in such a matter-of-fact tone. Ratchet might not approve of Pharma’s new obsession with Rung _(Rung),_ but it seemed like it had given Pharma some kind of perspective on the disaster that had been Ratchet’s one and only attempt at a real long-term relationship.

“Probably shouldn’t try again, huh?” asked Ratchet.

“Absolutely not.” Pharma sniffed. “Anyway, I’m not interested.”

“I wasn’t talking about _you,_ I was—”

“We!” yelled First Aid, “Are in surgery!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Ratchet. “Alright, let’s start an energon drip and see if that fixed the problem.”

\---

Optimus was trying to get used to this—whatever it was, extended threesome, this thing. But there were so many parts to it. He’d had to learn how to sleep with other people, with Ratchet sometimes leaving in the middle of the night, with Deadlock’s occasional night terrors. He’d had to learn what words Ratchet would tolerate during interfacing, which places on Deadlock’s frame were on- and off-limits. This thing—experience, that was a good word for it—this experience was endlessly rewarding. It filled a hole in Optimus’ life that he’d assumed would always be empty. It was also exhausting. And now there was _breakfast._

Whenever he and Deadlock stayed overnight in the same place, inevitably, Deadlock would make him breakfast. Optimus could get the midnight snacks, but Deadlock seemed determined that breakfast would be his territory. Deadlock always woke up first, no matter how early Optimus tried to rise; somehow Deadlock was always up earlier. 

The first time Deadlock had pushed a cube into Optimus’ hands, Optimus had naturally thanked him—it was a kind thing to do, and Optimus was grateful to be included, to feel as though his presence was still welcome even after the overload. He’d taken the offered energon (just the way he liked it, too, thick with stirred-in powder) with a heartfelt thank you, maybe a little _much_ for a simple breakfast, but perhaps the night before had left him tender in more ways than one.

Deadlock, however, had not appreciated this.

“I’m not your _servant,”_ he’d said, even as he scooped another spoonful of beryllium into Optimus’ cube. “Don’t think I’m about to run around simpering at your beck and call, alright.”

“...No,” Optimus said, “of course not.”

“Good,” Deadlock said, and gave the cube a swift shake to disperse the powder evenly, his hand neatly capping the open top of the cube. “So don’t get used to it.”

He’d proceeded to fix Optimus fuel every morning that they slept together since then, with an equally snippy reaction each time Optimus tried to express his sincere gratitude. Ratchet didn’t get the same treatment when _he_ muttered thanks for his cube—but then, Ratchet rarely stayed the night, even though it was almost always his apartment they congregated at. More than once Optimus had observed Deadlock in the kitchen, by the thin morning light, morosely turning over in his hand the tin full of silicate that Ratchet liked best.

The tin was always full, these days. Somehow Optimus doubted that Ratchet was the one keeping it carefully, attentively topped off.

“So where you gonna put roots down,” Deadlock asked him, one morning, over their matching cubes of fuel. It still felt luxurious, sometimes, to fuel multiple times in one day. During the war, sometimes Optimus had been lucky to have five minutes to himself to choke down a week’s worth of rations before his tank hit the red line.

“I already have a house,” Optimus said, “it’s pretty close to the archive. I’m satisfied with it.”

“Nah, I mean,” Deadlock gestured vaguely at Optimus’ chest, “you gonna start your own temple? Or reuse one of the old ones?”

The knowledge, in Rewind’s voice, popped immediately into his head: _Tetrahex was pretty conservative before the whole population was run off, there’s like four separate Orthodox temples and at least one for the Clavis Aurea. Which are you gonna choose?_

“Oh,” Optimus said, “er.”

“You better not be thinking of taking up with the Church of the Thirteen,” Deadlock said. “I’ll kick your aft if you’re gonna start going around like some God-King in gold skid plates.”

“God, definitely not,” Optimus said. “I can’t imagine.”

Deadlock looked satisfied with the quickness of his denial. “So what is it? No way your faction lets you get away with dropping the ball on the Primacy, not after you already gave up the government.”

Optimus winced at the reminder. It was true that he’d been… pestered. Lightly. With the strong implication that the pestering would increase until he did his duty. He wouldn’t be able to get away with skipping both services and religious holidays for much longer. 

He’d never told anyone but Ratchet the real reason he was so reluctant to take on his religious function. “The thing is,” he said, hoping that Deadlock would understand, “it seems disingenuous to pledge a temple when I’m not… entirely sure that Primus exists.”

Deadlock didn’t look like he understood. He looked like he’d just been hit in the face with a steel bat. “You _what?”_

Optimus picked at the lid of his fuel cube. “He might! I just don’t know, and everyone thinks I _should_ know. I’ve never seen anything that felt particularly miraculous, and I’ve certainly never had a visitation—”

“Of course God exists!” Deadlock said. “Everything comes from Primus! Primus is the aspect of divinity in everything Cybertronian. _Existence_ is a spiritual reality, dumbaft, that’s all the evidence you should need!”

“Oh,” Optimus said. A memory nagged at him—his processor was like a filing system nowadays, it was one of the reasons why he thought it so likely that the matrix was simply a high-end storage system rather than a gift from Primus. Rung’s reception. A drunken conversation about toasts and superstition. Deadlock, the column of his throat working as he swallowed shot after shot, only allowing himself to lean on Ratchet when he thought no one was watching. “Oh, you’re a spiritualist. I forgot.”

“Unbelievable,” Deadlock said. “State religion’s bled so dry not even the goddamn Prime believes in it anymore. The revolution couldn’t’ve come a minute too early. Gimme your cube, it’s the end of the fiscal quartex and I’m in for a hell of a day, I’m getting us seconds.”

By the time they’d worked their way through the second cube, Deadlock had given Optimus a full ranking of every temple in Tetrahex, with the only acceptable score given to a group of spectralists who met once a month in an abandoned shuttle field to hold a singalong. He’d also given Optimus an audio-full on primalist philosophy and demanded he debate the existence of the Guiding Hand, which Optimus mostly did by going “Um” and taking a long sip of his second breakfast. Deadlock was on him all the way to the door, at which point he paused in his passionate defense of a dualistic spiritual cosmology in order to pull Optimus down into a goodbye kiss, surprisingly fangless, with just a flirtation of glossa against Optimus’ surprised lips.

And then he was gone, down the ramp to the street, muttering about state religion all the way.

There was a fluttering warmth in Optimus’ spark as he watched Deadlock go. Another odd thing to get used to.

\---

Deadlock was nose deep in Ratchet’s neck cables, his fingers working feverishly inside of Ratchet’s clenching, sloppy valve. They’d been at it all night and Optimus had tapped out a round ago, his optics cycling down to half power while Deadlock took Ratchet’s refractory period as a personal challenge. This wasn’t at all the direction Ratchet had meant for this to go—he was trying to extract himself from this frag-buddies thing before it got too painful, and that meant _not_ doing marathon sex. Most of the time he managed it okay. If it hurt a little to leave Optimus and Deadlock tangled up in his own berth, well, that was because Ratchet wasn’t moving fast enough.

But tonight Deadlock had seemed fevered, so openly hungry for him that Ratchet hadn’t wanted to disappoint. He didn’t _get_ what Deadlock found so attractive about his frame, but it was hard to deny when Deadlock was practically begging to watch Ratchet overload again.

Ratchet’s valve clenched at the thought, and Deadlock’s vents hitched. He’d managed to work himself up worse than Ratchet at this point, grinding his spike against Ratchet’s hip and panting open-mouthed into his neck, teeth and glossa and a mess of oral fluid.

“Please Ratch,” he hissed, “please, I need—just let me—”

“What?” Ratchet said, his voice thick with static after three overloads, “You wanna come? You can come, kid, I’m not stopping you.”

Deadlock let out a little whine, a wet bubble of transfluid escaping his spike to smear along Ratchet’s hip.

“It’s—Ratch don’t be mad, please, I just—god I wanna taste you, I wanna drink you up, please, just a wrist line—”

Ratchet stiffened in his grip, reached down and grabbed hold of the hand currently working his callipers from the inside. “You want to _syphon_ me?”

Deadlock let out another pitiful whine, his whole body squirming against Ratchet’s as if he was still trying to rub himself to relief. “I’ll be so gentle Ratchet, please, give me a chance.”

Ratchet pulled Deadlock’s hand out. Deadlock’s fingers twitched, glistening with slick, and Ratchet had to set that image to one side so he could focus. “You didn’t mention this when we were in negotiations, kid. Not the first time, and not tonight.”

Deadlock buried his face deeper against Ratchet’s neck. His tongue flickered out to lick one of the dents in Ratchet’s cabling, and Ratchet barely suppressed a flinch.

“I know you Autobots don’t like it,” Deadlock mumbled. “I thought I could—I thought I didn’t need—”

“I’m not doing that,” Ratchet said. “It’s unsanitary and risky and barbaric.”

“It’s _not,”_ Deadlock said, “I’ll patch you and clean you and everything, I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

“No,” Ratchet said. “Hard no. Energon doesn’t belong in a berthroom.”

Deadlock let out a hiss between tight clenched teeth, but he nodded into Ratchet’s neck and let his hand go limp in Ratchet’s grip. For his own part, Ratchet couldn’t quite come down on what emotion was swirling uneasily in his tanks. It might have been dread. It might have been guilt. Deadlock rarely asked him for anything, and he’d been more than gracious about Ratchet’s boundaries up until now. He hadn’t tried to kiss Ratchet again since the first time Ratchet had pushed his face away. Sometimes Ratchet wished he would. Sometimes Ratchet wished for a lot of things.

There was a rustle of plating, and then Optimus’s forearm flopped down over Deadlock’s shoulder. “Here,” he said, sleepily, “he can have mine.”

“ _Optimus,”_ Ratchet said, disapproving and alarmed. This was not the kind of offer to be making so casually.

“It’s my frame,” Optimus said, still in a sleep-fuzzy tone, soft around the edges. “I’ve had worse than some teeth in there. I don’t mind.”

Ratchet glanced down at Deadlock, tucked against him. The mech was wide-eyed, frozen, as if someone had hit him in the back of the helm with a battering ram. 

“Seems like it’s important to you,” Optimus said, and his wrist bounced lightly against Deadlock’s plating. “I’m willing to give it a try.”

Because of the way they were spooned together, Ratchet could feel the hard jump of Deadlock’s spike against his side. After a moment, Deadlock rolled over, away from Ratchet, and climbed up onto Optimus’s body, crouched low, knee thrown over thigh. Ratchet could actually see him inflate back into his normal cocky self, his plating ruffling back up from where it had been slicked down in—what? Mortification? Misery? Resentment?

Whatever it had been, Deadlock was over it now. “You sure, Prime?” he said, flaunting his canines with a smile. “You don’t mind some gutter mech killer ‘con putting his teeth in you?”

“You’ve already done that plenty,” Optimus pointed out reasonably. “And you’ve taken good care of me so far.”

Deadlock stared at him for a long second, and then practically dove for the offered wrist, burying his face in the gaps of the metal. There was a wet sound, a soft hiss, and then Deadlock moaning, blissful, as wanton and unguarded as Ratchet had ever seen him. His other hand came up blindly and cupped Optimus’s face with a tenderness that made Ratchet’s tank flip over, his claw-tipped thumb stroking absently at the delicate metal above Optimus’ mask and under his optic.

Libido all but extinguished now, Ratchet quietly pulled himself up and off the berth, away from the two of them. He wiped himself down quickly and checked his chronometer—more than enough time before he even needed to leave for shift, but hey, there was always some extra work to be done at a hospital. He could follow up on that one case of mites that had been giving First Aid such hell.

Maybe he shouldn’t leave Optimus and Deadlock without a medical observer, but—yeah. No. It wasn’t really that dangerous, nothing worse than a nick on a minor fuel line. And nothing made it plainer that a mech wasn’t needed than two lovers lost in their own gory little paradise, moaning and slurping and cuddling like it was going out of style. He made the mistake of glancing back just in time to see Deadlock surface, mouth smeared with visceral pink, and press a gentle kiss to the palm of Optimus’s hand.

Ratchet turned abruptly away. _Mites_ , he thought, _just worry about the mites._

They made a cute couple. Nice match, at the end of the day. They’d be real happy together, if he was any judge.

Ratchet should be proud. He was the one who’d set them up, after all.

\---

Deadlock patched Optimus up, like he promised. Cleaned the wound, sealed the punctures with a mesh bandage from Ratchet’s home kit, stroked Optimus’ spike until Optimus came with a little pleased sigh. Then Deadlock sat on the edge of the berth and wrapped his hands around his own finials, squeezing until he heard something creak.

“What’s wrong?” said Optimus, suddenly alert.

“Nothing,” gritted out Deadlock. “It’s fine, it’s fine, go to sleep.”

Too late. Optimus was tugging Deadlock toward him, gently uncurling Deadlock’s fingers, holding Deadlock’s hands as if they were somehow precious. Deadlock didn’t want to pull away and show weakness, but he didn’t want to see the way Optimus was looking at him. He picked a spot on the wall instead, just over Optimus’ shoulder.

“I liked siphoning,” said Optimus. “It felt very intimate.”

“Yeah, it’s—” Deadlock stopped himself. “I shouldn’t’ve asked for it. I knew Ratchet wouldn’t like it. It’s too much, I’m too much.”

“I think,” said Optimus, “that it’s not wrong to ask, but it’s also not wrong to say no, or wrong to feel uncomfortable. I mean, I enjoyed it, but Ratchet’s not as adventurous as he likes to think, and—”

Deadlock gave into temptation and snuck a peek at Optimus’ face. Oh. He looked exhausted. Catch him forcing the Prime into a serious conversation after a whole night of fragging.

“—Does that make sense?” said Optimus.

“Yeah, great,” said Deadlock. “Thanks. Hey, lay down so I can recharge on top of you.”

Optimus didn’t take too much persuading. Deadlock didn’t sleep much that night, but at least he made sure Optimus got plenty of rest.

\---

There was a break room on their floor of the hospital, which was partially crowded with boxed supplies, but at least had one decent card table set up in the corner and an old pre-war kettle of Rung’s that could boil solvent in about a klik on a good day.

Deadlock dropped his face into his hands, fighting the urge to squeeze his finials again. “I just don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “You know Ratchet, he’s like—he’s like a wall, sometimes, I got no idea what he’s thinking.”

“I know, dear,” Rung said, pushing Deadlock’s cup another fraction closer to him on the table. He’d made them both something he called _calming tea,_ which tasted like titanium powdered into a solvent sludge, and it wasn’t very good. But Rung had made this for Deadlock every time Deadlock had come to him with a problem, ever since the Decepticons, back when it was impossible to get good tasting anything on the war front. If nothing else, the familiarity was soothing.

“Some days I think we’re doing good,” Deadlock said, “like, I think we’re on the same page, and then he pushes me away. I know he’s doing it, I can see him doing it, but what am I supposed to say? I can’t go chasing after him like he’s a mark on the battlefield.”

“No,” Rung said, “I don’t think that would go over well. Have you tried telling him how you feel?”

“I don’t _know_ how I feel,” Deadlock said. “I just want to be… closer to him. I know I said I didn’t like him but you were right, you’re _always_ right, I like him a lot. But even when I’m spike deep in him I can’t tell if he likes _me.”_

Rung’s tea spattered across the table top.

“You’re _dating?”_ Rung said, “Since _when?_ I thought we were just talking about a crush!”

Deadlock lifted his head. “But that’s the thing,” he said, “we’re _not_ dating. If we were dating he would let me kiss him and make him breakfast and take him places and, and talk about his life—”

A wave of realization crashed over Deadlock, the last year of progress rushing like a warp drive through his mind, and his tanks dropped into his pedes. 

“Oh my god,” Deadlock said blankly, his hands clutching desperately for his cup, “I’m in a relationship with Prime.”

“I’m sorry,” Rung said, “I think I missed something, _how_ many people are you currently sleeping with?”

\---

There were a bunch of parks in Tetrahex, but the one on the southwest side was the best. It had a rock garden, a reflecting pool, and there was always someone doing slow transformation meditation over by the old, half-shattered statue of Primus. Sometimes Deadlock joined them, on his days off. Today he didn’t feel like it—he was all jittery, his armor fluffing like he was too big for his frame. He sat with the memorial wall instead, aft on the ground and back against the cool stone with all the names of the people who’d died for (or because of) a vision.

Optimus Prime arrived in the park just as the last of the mid-afternoon shift breakers were departing, his outline immediately recognizable even from a distance. Deadlock frowned at the slight perk of anticipation in his emotional core at the sight. He wasn’t supposed to be _excited_ to see Prime. He was a good Megatron-fearing Decepticon, war or no war. Wanting to get up and kiss a Prime hello was as good as spiritual treason.

“Hello,” Optimus said, once he was close enough to do so without shouting. “What’s the occasion? You never want to meet up during the day. Did Rung give you the afternoon off?”

Yes, actually, he had. In fact, Rung had practically chased Deadlock out of the office, with orders not to come back until he’d at least told _someone_ about _one_ of his emotions.

“Prime,” said Deadlock. “We need to talk.”

Optimus stopped short, his expression clouding. God damn but he was expressive, even with that mask perpetually closed over his mouth. Ratchet said he hadn’t been born with the mouth, it was something he picked up in an upgrade. Mask-and-intake mechs never quite lost the instinct to keep the sensitive intake protected, even when the intake got replaced. Deadlock wished he hadn’t started finding it endearing. That moment, every time, when Optimus remembered he had lips and could kiss with them—

“What’s going on?” Optimus said. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Deadlock said. He turned his face away. “Look, how do you feel about Ratchet.”

“Well that’s certainly a question,” Optimus said, with visible unease. “Ratchet’s my friend, obviously. We’ve been friends since forever. Since before the war. You remember.”

Arms crossed, Deadlock rapped his fingers against his elbow joint. “I remember,” he said. “How could I forget.”

Optimus was quiet for a moment, and then he also settled up against the long dark onyx of the memorial wall, slumping until he was shoulder to shoulder with Deadlock. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

Deadlock stared down the length of the park garden, lovingly reconstructed like the rest of uptown Tetrahex, peaceful and washed with sunlight. 

“I’m thinking this whole emotional projection thing is _slag,”_ Deadlock said, “because doing stuff with you didn’t make me want Ratchet _less,_ it just made me want you _more._ And now I’m aft over end for another fragging Autobot, and I can’t have _either_ of you.”

“What?” Optimus said. “Wait, no, what? Look, last night was a little messy, but Ratchet’s not going to break up with you just because of a, an interfacing foible. You two are—”

“We’re not _anything,”_ Deadlock snapped. “All he does ever since you got involved is push me away. Maybe you’ve got a chance with him, since you’re _friends,_ but I sure as scrap don’t.”

“Er,” Optimus said, “I thought it was already established that Ratchet invited me to spend time with both of you. As a favor to _me._ If anyone’s the odd one out here, I am.”

“He brings you to everything,” Deadlock said. “He even brought you to Rung’s wedding. You’re the first person he calls about anything. I’m just some dumb glitch who had to beg him to let me stroke his spike.”

“That’s—wait a second,” Optimus said, “rewind, I had another question. Did you imply you’re in love with me?”

“Tell me you don’t want him,” Deadlock said, effortlessly ignoring the irrelevant. “Just try to stand there and tell me that if he asked you to conjunx him, you wouldn’t say yes.”

Optimus’s vents made a startled wheeze. 

Heat boiled up from the rock garden along the walkway. Optimus was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Being in love with a friend is like a rope that’s been fraying for hundreds of years finally giving out above you. You see it going all the time, but you keep holding on anyhow. What else can you do?”

Deadlock nodded, grimly. 

“For what it’s worth,” Optimus said, not actually looking at Deadlock, “I can see what he sees in you. Vividly.”

“He doesn’t see anything in me,” Deadlock muttered. “And neither do you. You’re just doing that nicey-nice Autobot condescension thing.”

Optimus’s shoulder was hot, solid, a finger's breadth from his own. He refused to look.

 _“I_ see somebody with strong convictions,” Optimus said, “someone who loves fiercely, who is loyal to the bitter end, who never gives up even when the odds are impossible. So why are you giving up now?”

In the garden, the bright cocoons of ornamental steelworms were blooming, opening their green and red and yellow petals to the sun. It was going to be a hot summer season, and soon there would be nothing left here of the creatures but their unfolded, glittering chrysalises all along the pillars of the garden. 

“You love me?” Optimus said.

“Yeah,” Deadlock said.

Optimus tipped his head back against the wall, to face the sky. “That’s a relief,” he said, “because I love you too.”

\---

Halfway between getting the lids pulled off the energon for three and scraping the scrap accumulation off the top of his only table (where did this all come from? He just cleaned this off last week), Ratchet answered the door to both Deadlock and Optimus. 

“Came here together?” he asked, ignoring the unpleasant swoop in his tanks. “Getting pretty chummy lately, aren’t you?”

Deadlock and Optimus exchanged a look. _That_ was new. Ratchet abruptly turned around and went back to the energon, leaving them to their devices.

“Got dinner out for everyone,” he explained, over his shoulder, “wasn’t sure if you’d fueled yet or not.”

He finished pulling the tab on his own cube and turned back to the door, only to find both his guests staring him down in perfect concert. 

“Uh,” he said. “Or did you just wanna get right to it?” 

Deadlock pushed the door closed behind him, without breaking his gaze. Ratchet abruptly found himself in the unpleasant state of kinship with a hunted electrovole. 

“We’ve decided,” Optimus said, in his gravest tones, “that we’re interested in more than casual fragging.”

“Oh,” Ratchet said. His spark churned like a sea in a storm. Here it was, after all. His time was up. He wouldn’t—he _wouldn’t_ —be disappointed. He’d had a good long run, longer than he ever hoped when they started this. He’d had it about as good as someone his age, with his history, could hope for. They’d all still be friends. He just had to—he just had to focus on being _happy_ for them, on being pleased that he’d arranged things so well, not on how quiet his home would be again, or how cold the berth—

“Congratulations,” he said. 

“No,” Optimus said, looking a little confused, “we mean with _you._ We want to be more than casual with you.”

“Wh,” Ratchet stuttered, “what?”

“We want you,” Deadlock said, his frame as tense and poised as if he were facing down a line of enemy combatants. “We want you, and Optimus thinks maybe you want us too. So let’s hear the truth out of you, right now. Is this all just a pity frag to you? Or do you wanna be something real with us, too?”

Ratchet realized his mouth was open, but wasn’t sure he could remember the commands to close it.

“Ratchet,” Optimus said, more gently now, “I’ve loved you since Primus knows how long. I’m not sure I could even say when it was that I noticed it. On days when I really thought I was going to lose myself, your friendship got me through the war. I don’t know what I would be without you.”

“Optimus,” Ratchet said, weakly. “I’m not—you don’t have to romance me just because I was a decent friend to you—”

Deadlock stomped forward, shoving his finger at Ratchet’s chassis. “He likes you. _I_ like you. You’re not gonna reason us out of liking you. That’s not up for debate. What _is_ on the table,” and here he pushed Ratchet back, just enough that Ratchet staggered slightly, “is if you feel anything about _us.”_

Ratchet glanced down at his chassis. He rubbed the spot where Deadlock had prodded him. “I—Both of you?”

“ _Yes,”_ Deadlock said, “ _both_ of us.”

Some ragged ball of emotions caught in the back of Ratchet’s intake. His frame felt strange, awake, distant.

“I don’t get it,” he said, “you’ve got each other, what do you need me for?”

 _“For?”_ Deadlock echoed, frowning. “We just _want_ you, full stop.”

Ratchet shook his head, retreated another step. “Can’t figure what you see in _me,”_ he said. “No matter which way I try to spin it, I just can’t figure you for the type to get hot over the utilitarian appeal of a respectable function alt. I’m not any great shakes in berth, I don’t get half your kinks, I won’t let you suck my lines or void fluid on me—”

“That’s quite enough,” Optimus said, profoundly aggrieved. “Let's not turn this into a laundry list of my sexual explorations.” 

“I mean I always had some interested mechs, even before Pharma,” Ratchet went on, “nothing’s more obviously functional than an ambulance, and those alt-exempt fraggers just loved having a mech around with a show-off career. But that’s about all I have going for me, with a lot of baggage along for the ride.”

Drift blinked. “I thought I made it pretty clear I think you’re hot as smelter slag,” he said. “Are you serious right now?”

“But—”

Deadlock pushed forward again, until Ratchet was back up to the wall, his plating growing warm with the heat of Deadlock’s pouring ventilation.

“I. love. you. Ratchet of Vaporex,” he said. “I love the way you care about people, and the way you smile when you think no one’s looking, and, Primus save me, I even love the way you argue with me about scrap that doesn’t matter. What I wanna know—the only goddamn thing I wanna know—is whether you love me too.”

The ragged ball of emotions in Ratchet’s intake burst, like a dam, spilling a hoarse and quiet _“yes,”_ across his teeth.

Deadlock stared at him. And then his knife sharp mouth split into a grin, and he swept Ratchet up into a kiss that made Ratchet’s pistons pop. 

Deadlock pulled back, messy and glowing. “And Optimus too?”

Ratchet tilted his head, to peer past Deadlock’s shoulder. “And Optimus too.”

Possibly even more delighted than before, Deadlock kissed him again, so hard and so deep that Ratchet thought his audials might be ringing. There was a fierce tenderness there that Ratchet had never thought he would be allowed to experience first hand, an earnest sincerity that was everything he had once seen in the shape of Drift.

“Sorry,” said Deadlock, breathless, pulling back reluctantly as if he might die if he stopped touching Ratchet but he was going to force himself to do it anyway, “sorry, I couldn’t help—I know you don’t like kissing—”

“Shut up and come back here,” said Ratchet, and reeled him back in.

With his free hand Ratchet reached out, and Optimus, his old friend, his most loved confidant, slipped past Deadlock’s shoulder and pressed his own blunt-masked affection against Ratchet’s cheek. Deadlock pulled back again, ostensibly making room for Optimus to take his turn this time, and fixed Ratchet with a stern look of warning.

“Frag this getting up and leaving right after sex pitslag,” Deadlock said, narrow-eyed. “And frag this conveniently having a shift every single time we come over. You’re gonna cuddle us, and you’re gonna _like_ it.”

Ratchet laughed, his face half buried under the relentless bunting of Optimus’ mask. Someone needed to remind the guy that he had a mouth these days, but Ratchet would worry about that later.

“Feared assassin Deadlock of Rodion,” Ratchet said, “ordering me to _cuddle.”_

“Hmph,” Deadlock said. “I wouldn’t have to, if you were a half decent Autobot in berth. Everyone knows Autobot fragging subsists entirely of cuddling, snuggling, and miscellaneous dry humping.”

Ratchet snorted. “Based on the sex injuries I saw during the war, that is not even slightly true.”

“You both,” Optimus said, burying his mask in the underside of Ratchet’s chin, “should hear some of the things _I_ was propositioned with.”

Ratchet and Deadlock startled at the same time. They looked at Optimus. They looked at each other. 

Deadlock’s finials twitched.

“...I am a reasonable amount of interested,” he said, “in this topic.”

\---

Later, once they were all thoroughly exhausted and Ratchet was buried in a heap of cooling plating, listening to Deadlock snore and Optimus’ smokestacks chuff, he had to admit it. The worst outcome. The thing he’d never, ever live down.

He _did_ like cuddling.


End file.
